Don't Call It Night (21 page)

Should I go to Elat tomorrow?

Should I look for a girl called Martha?

Should I investigate? Compare testimonies?

And what about the father? Why hasn't he been to Elat? Or has he been and not told me? And why should he have told me?

What did his aunt know? And when?

What was he looking for in the nurse's room? Why did he sneak in there? And why did I freeze up when he hesitantly asked for something to write with? Did he really flutter his eyelids or am I just imagining it now because of Avraham's story?

You can invest all your resources for a hundred years. In the end you won't know anything.

It is better to do the right thing than to try to decipher the truth. Better, like that policeman, to work as far as possible in a drily compassionate way: with the precision and persistence of a tired, experienced surgeon who volunteers for an extra shift because at the last minute as he is driving out of the parking lot of the hospital, on his way home at the end of a long day, he notices that more casualties are being brought in. So he turns round, parks his car, quietly puts on gown and mask again, and returns to the operating theatre.

At the end of July, Avraham Orvieto arrived, alone, without Arbel this time, a lean, ageing, weak-shouldered man in cream-coloured jeans and a crumpled bush jacket. In his quiet, sad voice he promised Theo that he would transfer twenty thousand dollars to him within a fortnight on account for the loan, and that the rest was imminent. Theo said, What's the hurry? Then they talked between themselves about some oversight or error way back in the War of Independence. Avraham hardly said a word to me, except to thank me for the coffee; it may have been because Theo did not let go of him for an instant. I went out to the grocer's and when I got back I found that they had both reached the same conclusion concerning a certain decision taken by Yigal Allon and another famous military commander by the name of Nahum Sarig, nicknamed Sergei. It turned out they had both known him well and been opposed to his tactics, whereas I had never even heard of him, but when they offered to explain to me in what the particular greatness of this legendary commander consisted, and in what way his tactics had been faulty, I said, Thank you, but I am not interested in the subject, and besides, I haven't got the background. In fact I found it pleasant, even enjoyable, to sit between them and listen to them conversing in low voices, like a pair of conspirators hatching a secret plot, as though the War of Independence were still being waged underground somewhere in the Negev Desert, and the blunders and missed opportunities and alternative strategies could be discussed only indirectly, in coded language. Avraham Orvieto mentioned some fortified height by the name of Bir Aslug, and Theo disagreed with him and said, I think you're mistaken, to the best of my recollection that was a little further south, near Kadesh-Barnea. Avraham said thoughtfully, Still, the credit for the flanking movement by way of the ancient Roman Road belongs to Pini Finkel. And Theo said, Permit me to disagree with you there, I think you deserve the credit for that one, Avraham. Pini Finkel was insignificant, when it comes down to it he was killed because of his own superficiality, and by the way he had a son called Nimrod, I brought him up, he lived with me for two years when he was still a wretched youth, I gave him a job, I gave him a hand up, and the upshot was that he was the one who kicked me out of the Development Agency, he didn't do it on his own but he was the one who was behind the cabal. Never mind. It was all a long time ago.

He had never told me. I had never asked him.

I poured them some more coffee and left them alone together. I decided to go and collect a pair of sandals that were being repaired.

I had called a meeting of the committee for eleven o'clock in the morning at our apartment. Theo prepared plates of fruit, glasses for cold drinks, walnuts and almonds, thinly sliced whole-meal bread and a selection of cheeses on a wooden board, and set it all ready on the coffee table. Ludmir arrived twenty-five minutes early, panting, in his khaki shorts and battered flip-flops, and after pronouncing his usual slogan, Noa smoke without a fire, he demolished all the walnuts and most of the almonds by himself. The Ethiopian immigrants, he declared, were being treated here like shir, not that the Russians were faring much better, anyway the Absorption authorities ought to be lined up against the wall and shot, and the quarries ought to be dynamited before they poisoned us all with their dust. Muki Peleg was a quarter of an hour late, looking like that young thinker on the brandy advertisement again, with his flowing locks, and an artistic silk scarf round his neck; he told a couple of jokes, apologized on behalf of Linda, who had joined an organized tour in the Jordan Valley, quizzed Avraham ©rvieto about the girls over there in the Congo, what's that, Nigeria, same difference, then said, Come on then, Theo, start the meeting and let's get it over with.

Theo said:

Permit me to outline briefly the difficulties we may anticipate. First, Batsheva can prolong the discussion in the Town Council as long as she likes. She can set the subject low on the agenda. She can work against us in the government departments, to prevent us from getting the permits. She can have the matter discussed but delay it indefinitely with all sorts of formal and technical snags. Second, the public is already up in arms. Setting up the clinic will bring property values down, will lead to nuisance from crime and noise, will expose local youngsters to contact with dubious elements. People claim that they have invested their money in an apartment in Tel Kedar to live a peaceful life, whereas the clinic will wreck their peace and quiet, with ambulances in the night, police patrol cars, violent incidents, criminal elements springing up in the wake of the addicts. Anyway, you don't turn a town with hardly any crime into a cuckoo's nest or a refuse heap for the big cities for a fistful of dollars. Who needs addicts here? Pushers? Pimps wandering round the school during break? Fifteen-year-old drug-sniffing hookers? Little junkies robbing homes and stealing cars and mugging old folks to scrape together a few pennies? And dirty needles in our gardens, maybe infected with the AIDS virus? They're already going around from door to door getting Tel Kedar to sign petitions—what's all this about treatment, once an addict always an addict, and there's bound to be someone behind it who plans to make a fortune out of it, and why here anyway, isn't it enough they've saturated us with new immigrants that no other town would take in such quantities? Soon they'll be sending us Intifada kids from the Territories, Molotov cocktail throwers, for rehabilitation. And the more the objections multiply, the more Batsheva will have a field day, dealing with each different objection separately, the procedure will drag on for years, and that's before the residents get organized and start taking legal action. Apart from which, the Town Council is liable simply to refuse outright to sanction the change of use in relation to the existing municipal master plan. Checkmate. And that is only on the local level. But there are other levels too: the Departments of Welfare, the Interior, Health, Education, the police, half the government in fact. And we haven't even begun to talk about the running costs. Shall I continue?

Avraham Orvieto sneaked me one of his winter-light smiles, and said pensively: What then? Should we give up? Make do with a memorial garden with some swings?

Theo said: Compromise.

And Ludmir: Compromise. Compromises stink.

Then Muki Peleg reported to the committee on the sale of the apartment that had belonged to the aunt, Elazara Orvieto, which was henceforth to house a dental surgery. The money that would shortly be received for the sale would, with Mr. Orvieto's consent, go straight into the trust fund and could be used for the renovation of the Alharizi house once love had broken down the barriers of prejudice, as the rabbi said to the nun.

I did not speak.

And so it was decided that Theo would go to Jerusalem with Avraham Orvieto the following week, to try to secure the support of the minister who had served with Theo in a combat engineering unit forty years ago and knew Avraham well from his days as military attaché in Paris. It was further decided to meet with the authorities of Beersheba University and the leaders of the Anti-Drugs Campaign. And it would be necessary to alter the composition of the committee. It was essential to bring in at least a nucleus of influential and well-connected citizens, teachers, social workers, psychologists, respected local personalities, perhaps one or two parents who were progressively minded, or whose children were affected by the problem, and the editor of the local paper; and maybe also an artist or two.

It turns out, said Ludmir blankly, that I am redundant.

And Muki Peleg added: As the husband said when he surprised his wife in his neighbour's arms. Will you leave Linda in, at least? So she can go on doing the typing?

After the meeting, when Ludmir and Muki had left, Muki hurrying ahead in his sky-blue shoes to call the elevator while Ludmir ambled after him with his camel's gait, Theo said: I'm going to leave you here for a quarter of an hour while I pop down and fetch us a pizza from Palermo. We'll save the time we would have wasted making lunch. When I get back and we've eaten we'll go down and introduce Avraham to the place.

After the pizza we showed our visitor Tel Kedar, because Avraham Orvieto had asked to "catch something of the feel of the place". The gasping Chevrolet had trouble starting again, despite the two recent repairs. On the way Theo took it upon himself to explain the misconceived plan on which the town had been built, a conception that was doomed from the start. It may have been these words that made Avraham turn and send me another secret, fleeting smile, as though I were being offered a glimpse of a pleasant, cosy room. Whose shutters were closed again after a moment. A frail, slightly built man, with thinning white hair; his face furrowed and wrinkled by the African sun: the face of a veteran metal engraver who has retired and now divides his time between reading and thinking. He spoke only a little, in a soft grey voice, with self-effacing hesitancy, as though he found the very act of speaking to be something noisy. "And where are we meant to be shining, and by whom is our shining required?" I asked him silently from the back seat.

We drove slowly past apartment blocks and private houses, past palm trees ruffled by the desert breeze, fainting lawns, and poinciana saplings kept alive, as in intensive care, by a drip.

It's beautiful, it's exciting, said Avraham Orvieto, a completely new town, with no biblical or Arab past, built on a human scale, and you don't see any poor districts or any signs of neglect.

Maybe it's wrong of us to take it for granted.

Theo said: Modestly built is not necessarily a compliment.

And Avraham: Not necessarily. But it is.

At the square by the lights we stood for a few minutes in front of the Monument to the Fallen, on which were inscribed, in metallic letters, those words, the beauty of Israel is slain upon the high plac's, the penultimate letter still missing. In the same letters, only smaller, were the names of the twenty-one fallen, from Aflalo Yosef to Shumin Giora Georg. Old Kushner was sitting, hunched up, on a stool in the doorway of his cubbyhole, reading a thick volume. In the window of his shoe shop Pini Bozo had now placed his lacquer-wood model of a holy ark. Inside the ark passers-by could now see the colour photograph of his dead wife holding the dead baby aloft in her arms, touching the baby's forehead to her own, smiling to it with strong bright teeth, while the baby beamed back at her with its toothless mouth.

Then we had coffee in Theo's office, "Planning", on the top floor of the building to the left of the Town Hall. On the wall there were various maps, views, an enlargement of Ben Gurion staring resolutely towards an expanse of barren gullies. Theo showed his visitor some plans, ideas that he had thought up for an environmentally sensitive development in desert conditions, sketches of streets, squares, vaulted buildings related to one another in a manner carefully calculated to cast shadow and to repel the dazzling light, forming winding alleys like shaded valleys. It was plain that even though the visitor spoke little, his very presence ignited in Theo a sort of electric alertness. After the second cup of coffee Theo even took a blue folder out of a drawer and extracted from it three different sets of plans for the refurbishment of the Alharizi house. Avraham Orvieto looked at them silently for a while, and did not take his eyes off them even when he put a brief, conspiratorial question and received a terse reply. I did not hear what the question was, and I missed the answer too.

I walked over to the window. I could see a torn kite that had got tangled in the power lines and was swinging to and fro in the wind above the run-down billiard hall which also sold lottery tickets. Schatzberg the pharmacist's old dodderer, the one who died recently, was known as Elijah because he was in the habit of asking everybody courteously when Elijah was coming. From a death announcement that was turning yellow on the notice board opposite I learned that his real name was not Elijah but Gustav Marmorek. I suddenly recalled the expression that Benizri from Beersheba had used: "insignificant". I decided to stay there looking out the window, so as not to be in the way. Theo and the visitor seemed to be establishing bonds of closeness and sympathy that did not leave any room for me. I noticed that Theo had twice been treated to the fire-in-the-hearth-through-the-shutter smile. I wished I were somewhere else. In Lagos for instance.

At the meeting with Batsheva Dinur it turned out that Avraham Orvieto had commanded the reserve platoon in which her husband had fought and been killed in the battle for Jerusalem in 1967. Avraham had not forgotten him, Didi, the tall bearded boy who had stretched out on the asphalt in an alleyway while they were waiting, reading a musical score as though it were a thriller.

At the end of the conversation Batsheva asked Theo to put down in writing a detailed memorandum. I particularly need to know, she said, just how secure your stockade is intended to be. And in fact, if it is really to be a closed unit, what good can come of it for the wider community? And how about the staff: are they to be local or imported? And if imported, are they contractually obliged to reside here among us, or are they going to get in their cars at the end of the day, leave a duty officer behind and process in convoy back to civilization? Further, how much money is Mr. Orvieto, Avraham, planning to invest in the project, and how much, if anything, is he going to contribute to the running costs? And if you can't provide a convincing breakdown of figures for at least five years, then you might as well not bother to come back. Let's be clear that in all I've just said I haven't promised you anything more than a glass of cold water and a biscuit next time you come and see me, if you do. And by the way, a memorial, a benefaction, I understand that and appreciate it, after all this whole country of ours is a sort of memorial, and I understand that in this case the memorial has got to be something to do with young people, without young people we have no future, even if without a future we have no young people, but why not, say, a sports hall? A clubhouse? Or a swimming pool? Computerization of the educational system? A crafts and hobbies centre? New laboratories? A cinematheque? And, Noa, you say something. Bring them down to earth. After all, you have some influence over Theo, and if I'm not mistaken she has some influence over you too, Mr. Orvieto, Avraham, am I right? Eh?